Abstract:

Transparent electrodes (TEs) have become important components of displays, touch
screens, and solar photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion devices. As electrodes, they
must be electrically conductive while being transparent. Transparent materials are
normally poor conductors and materials with high electrical conductivity, such as
metals, are typically not transparent. From the few candidate materials, indium
tin oxide (ITO) is currently the best available, but indium is an expensive material
and ITO cost has risen with increasing demand. Therefore, alternative materials
or methods are sought to encourage production needs of applications and help in
reducing their price. This thesis presents and discusses results of experimental work
for a method, field-directed chaining, to produce a TE device which is nanowire-based,
with a figure of merit FoM= 2.39 x10E-4
Ohm E-1, comparable to ITO but with potential
for far lower cost.
Using electric field-directed chaining, multiple parallel long chains of metal nanowires
are assembled on inexpensive transparent materials such as glass by field directed
nanowire chaining, using methods first demonstrated in our laboratory.
In this work, we have improved the fraction of functional chains, by tuning the
field/voltage, a key step in increasing the FoM and lowering the cost. The effect
of operating parameters on TE optical and electrical properties has been studied and identified as well. From experiments with twenty seven substrates, each with
a range of electric field and nanowire concentration, the highest light transmission
achieved is 78% and the lowest sheet resistance achieved is 100 Ohm/sq. Among all
the operating parameters, the electric field has the most significant influence on the
fraction of nanowire chains that are functional. In the operating range of electric field strength available to us, we observed a monotonic increase in the fraction of
functional nanowire chains. We found a counter-intuitive change in TE properties in
a sub-range of nanowire concentration, associated with a change in the structure of
chained patterns.